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Collaboration provides new possibilities to solve distribution of goods

Thursday, November 29, 2018

On SVT Forum, you can see 'The Future of Transport' seminar from the 'Sustainable Transport' conference, where DenCity contributed with a presentation on improving efficiency of last-mile deliveries. Possibilities for sustainable e-commerce deliveries with representatives from Postnord and Velove Bikes were also discussed during the seminar.

'The Future of Transport' seminar, which was held during the 2018 'Sustainable Transport' arranged by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, was a discussion of how rapidly increasing e-commerce and its freight will be manageable in increasingly densified cities. 

Roland Elander, head of business development at Sustainable Innovation, presented DenCity's work and how the result of this work creates opportunities for efficiency and sustainability in last-mile deliveries. 

E-commerce increases by 15% annually and with the associated freight and the challenges that it entails. The increase involves not only deliveries of ordered goods, but also handling of returns, large numbers of barrier passages and lorries returning empty - a situation that is not sustainable.

In order to develop a solution for this, the DenCity project looks at how distribution and receiving can be made more efficient and one of the elements that is investigated is how post parcel agents can be consolidated in housing associations or offices. They are also looking at how e-commerce deliveries can be combined with services, such as offering laundry drop-off at the same place that the package is received.  

'The future is a multipurpose point where new, innovative concepts, collaborations and technologies go hand in hand with the user's needs and behaviour with a single objective – to maximise efficiency,' says Roland.

Roland presented one of the pilots no operated by DenCity during the seminar. In this case, a housing association can act as a post agent. The pilot project is based on some of the most difficult situations and the target groups where several of the 300 participating housing associations are owned by elderly persons. This places major demands on simple handling of e-commerce and apps, but also that critical goods requiring high security in delivery, e.g. medicine, can be managed. 

The next step will be to develop a full-service location, a project that DenCity will conduct starting in 2019.

'Customer operation is crucial. The property transforms from being merely a property into a service facility,' continues Roland. 'This is a solution that combines sustainability with fantastic service that has never been seen before.'

Johan Sandström, Environmental Specialist at Postnord, who talked about environmental effects of large-scale e-commerce, and Johan Erlandsson, founder and CEO of Velove Bikes , who presented the possibilities of bicycle logistics as a distribution form, also participated in the seminar.

You can see Roland's presentation on SVT play here

The seminar 'The Future of Transport' can be seen about 5:53 in the broadcast and Roland Elander's presentation begins about 6:03.

DenCity is a collaborative project between the business sector, academics and society, which is led by the national arena for collaboration and transport efficiency, CLOSER at Lindholmen Science Park. Read more about the DenCity here